A regular notebook. Just divide the page into four squares. In each of them, write down the tasks from your list. It’s like a diary, only it also helps you sort your tasks by importance and urgency.
Kanban boards . They visualize all your plans. You can add pictures or bright stickers – this will add interactivity to the process.
Mobile apps. They organize everything for you. No ne to draw anything, everything is already on your phone.
Interactive whiteboards. For example, Figma and Miro. With their help, you can quickly and easily visualize plans.
To effectively fill out the Eisenhower Matrix, you ne to be able to differentiate tasks according to two key criteria: what is important and what is urgent.
Importance
Ask yourself, “Will completing this task help me achieve my long-term goals?”
The importance of a task is determin by its proximity job function email list to your main goals or compliance with life values. For example, for a manager, an important task may be increasing sales, for a call center employee, fulfilling the sales plan.
Urgency
Urgency is assess by the ne for immiate completion. Ask yourself, “What will happen if I postpone this task?” If postponing it will result in miss delicious mistakes, creative madness! pportunities or problems, the task is consider urgent. For example, preparing a report becomes urgent if the deadline is only a few days away.
How to Use the Matrix: 3 Strategies
To use the Eisenhower Matrix effectively, you can choose one of three approaches:
Approach #1 “Emergency Response”
Here, the focus is on the things that ne to be done immiately (quadrant A). You start with the most urgent tasks and gradually move on to the less urgent america email list ones (quadrants B → C → D). This method is good in crisis situations and when deadlines are tight. However, it can lead to important tasks from quadrant B being miss, which in the long run creates the risk of new urgent tasks appearing.
Approach #2 “Personal Priority”
First, time is allocat for tasks from quadrant B (important but not urgent). This is usually the first half of the day or early afternoon. The rest of the tasks are fit into the remaining time slots. This method helps to focus on long-term goals, but may not be effective in crisis situations.
